Hushpuppi has been nabbed. He lived like a king and lounged like royalty. He is an Instagram Celebrity – the buzzword for popular figures celebrated only for the glamour and glint of the lifestyle they flaunt on social media.
Invictus Obinna Okeke was the first to fall. Unlike Huspuppi, he didn’t just brandish wealth or pose in front of fast cars. He presented talks and pioneered social enterprise programs that got people nodding in admiration. Forbes took notice and curated his rising empire.
There’s another one called Mompha. Apart from sharing weird names, a common thread is the strange opulence they display. How these young people came about their staggering wealth remained a myth until Invictus was outed. Now we know that the men we envied lived off the gullibility of their Western victims.
Time was when we celebrated values that were more enduring. Today, we worship wealth and belittle hard work. We confer celebrity status on “small girls with big God” whose claims to fame lay on putting their bodies on display and then make men who flaunt designer clothing our “role modem”.
Poverty has been demonized. Not just poverty but modesty. The society now sees wealth, obscene display of affluence, as the only sign of God’s blessings. We no longer question the sources of wealthy. What you have is God’s gift even stolen monies.
Some of these deviants fell victim to society’s expectation. Nowhere is the decadence more pronounced than in the glamorization of crime. You become a celebrity if you beat the system and succeed, so long as you share the proceeds. That is the tragedy of a society that has lost its conscience.
